Using internet forums can be a good way to market your site - but be aware of rules and regulations, else you might upset someone and be reported as spamming!
Carefully, and properly, used forums can drive genuine visitors to your website, for free. All it takes is a bit of time and effort on your behalf. Furthermore, the same techniques can also sometimes count as one way link building - possibly a great benefit!
Why only "possibly"? Well, for a start, many forums have been so blighted by spammers in the past that they now take action against people posting links. Some are quite harsh - removing all links and hiding them. Some only allow links to be posted by long standing member whilst others hide the links from search engines using the rel="nofollow" instruction, which was developed by Google especially for this sort of work.
Add to this that search engine programmers know that it is far too easy to get a one way link from a forum and have coded the weighting behind forum posts links to be far inferior to normal links, and you might start to wonder if you are wasting your time.
But you are not! About 18 months ago I was reading a running forum about a well known UK half marathon and many people were struggling to find accommodation for it. I posted a link to a page of mine on which there was an affiliate link to a hotel provider. Straight away I saw a few commissions appear and even now, when I am no longer promoting this scheme and even they entire site I was using for it has closed, I am still getting odd commissions for bookings on race weekend.
Such is the power of blogging that by one quick post I generated traffic to send to an affiliate scheme, that repaid my time handsomely. I could take this further and be more proactive in the forum and post recommendations to more of my own pages for running equipment affiliates, but it's a matter of getting the time to set that up.
But with careful posting it is easy, and allowed, to post replies including links to your websites. Quite often you will get warnings and bans if you take it too far - creating threads just to publicise your products, but if the reply you post is honest, helpful and happens to include a link to a supplier, which may be you, then no-one should complain.
Keep above the line and you can work this well. Look at it more as driving genuine traffic than search engine optimisation and you will be satisfied.
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